A report from the Economic Policy Institute that outlines the problems with popular methods of infrastructure planning and proposes more efficient, cost effective and environmentally sustainable methods.

The insurance industry has long acknowledged the fact of climate change, because they have had to insure the results of it. The rise in natural disasters, as a result of man-made global warming, is clear and recognised. Here you can explore what insurance companies have done to face climate change.

First a podcast from the Centre for International Governance Innovation:

Scientists are rigorous, they relish challenges and they are always looking to disprove or prove a hypothesis. This is why it's very important that Climate Change and the fact that we are causing it, are agreed upon by the overwhelming majority of scientists.

In fact the 3% of studies that supposedly fell outside of that consensus were proved to be flawed in recent studies.

"We examine the available studies and conclude that the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies."

This is the study that found the 3% of climate change denier studies were flawed or biased. Well worth a read.

"A common denominator seems to be missing contextual information or ignoring information that does not fit the conclusions, be it other relevant work or related geophysical data. In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup. Other typical weaknesses include false dichotomies, inappropriate statistical methods, or basing conclusions on misconceived or incomplete physics. We also argue that science is never settled and that both mainstream and contrarian papers must be subject to sustained scrutiny"

"As opposed to politics, where vested interests contend for supremacy, science is a field where the single goal is to discover the truth. The spirit of science propels those who work in their various fields to make sure current popular beliefs are tested for veracity"

" tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement,1 and the health implications of these actions"

"It presents a model that estimates the effects of climate change on agriculture and concludes that "excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050."

It links the increase of conflict in the nearly past decade to climate related food and resource insecurity:

"The concurrence of conflict and climate-related natural disasters is likely to increase with climate change, as climate change not only threatens food insecurity and malnutrition, but can also contribute to further downward deterioration into conflict, protracted crisis and continued fragility.

"In some cases the root cause of the conflict is competition over natural resources."

"This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence."

"Development in the Arab region has always been complex, but climate change is now acting as an accelerator of fragility, disrupting ecosystems and triggering displacement. Yet despite this growing complexity, decision making remains focused on sectoral, linear approaches. More integrated policies and institutions are needed that address the multi-dimensional nature of risk today"

The study links climate change to certain extreme events that decision makers will have to predict and prepare for:

"Warming increases the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights, favors increased atmospheric moisture that may result in more frequent heavy rainfall and snowfall, and leads to evaporation that can exacerbate droughts"

A study that looks at climate change in the national security and social stress context:

"During the coming decade, certain climate-related events will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of the affected societies or global systems to manage; these may have global security implications"

potential impacts of climate change on water, energy, and agriculture will make it a central driver of conflict. The impacts of climate change combine to make it a clear threat to collective security and global order in the first half of the 21st Century.” 

"The nexus between climate change and violent conflict is at the center of intensifying political and academic debate. Yet research on the extent and strength of this relationship remains inconclusive and much of the literature is largely empirical, lacking a sufficient theoretical underpinning. This study advances a conceptual framework linking climate change induced droughts and conflict, in potentially iterative relations"

Cities worldwide have taken the initiative to create programmes and plans to tackle the very serious threat of climate change. Here are some examples that other city planners, activists and leaders can learn from:

"This plan is the rst of its kind and lays out the pace, scale, and impact of the work we must do by 2020 to achieve this goal. It also commits us to work with other cities to develop a protocol to reduce our carbon footprint to zero" Mayor Bill de Blasio

"The aim is to act rather than passively endure climate change, to obtain a better knowledge and understanding of the challenges in order to strengthen the resilience of the Parisian territory" - Climate Action Plan

"There is a need for extensive investments and thorough planning to meet the challenges that the changes in the climate pose for Copenhagen. But by acting at the right time we can minimise ex- penditure on preventing and rectifying damage, and climate adaptation may help to create green growth for Copenhagen" - Copenhagen Climate Adaptation Plan

Further Resources For Cities

"C40 maintains a database of nearly 10,000 unique city climate actions spread across 11 city sectors, with approximately 3,000 actions reported in 2015 alone. The Global Action Data portal allows access to this data like never before" - C40

"The ambition of the Paris Agreement and of Deadline 2020 is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, but the risk of further increases in temperature remains signi cant. Unless preventative action is taken, climate change-related natural disasters have been estimated to put at risk 1.3 billion people by 2050 and assets worth $158 trillion – double the total annual output of the global economy."- C40

"Heralded as the “world’s biggest urban climate and energy initiative” by Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete, the Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy brings together thousands of local and regional authorities voluntarily committed to implementing EU climate and energy objectives on their territory." - Covenant of Mayors for Climate Energy

Here are some articles on construction and its relationship to emissions. How bad is it and what is being done to mitigate the problems? Start your exploration here and maybe begin to improve and innovate where you are.

"The principal objective of this study was to understand the economic, technical, practical and cultural barriers preventing construction professionals from selecting a variety of materials commonly identified as being lower in embodied carbon. It also sought to understand the role for regulation, professional institutions and advocacy groups in overcoming these barriers."

"With buildings lasting between 50 and 300 years, they have to respond to current and future needs. Effective governance of the building stock needs to account for change over time and incorporate future scenarios into the requirements for today’s buildings"

"the Tokyo Cap-and-Trade Program (TCTP), implemented since 2010, is an important measure to accelerate the building sector’s emission reduction to achieve Tokyo’s greenhouse gas target, 25% reduction by 2020 from a year 2000 baseline level"

"A fundamental question is whether there is sufficient ‘policy literacy’ within the built environment community to convincingly engage with policy-makers and policy formulation to play an active role in generating, explaining and evaluating policy options"

A listing of the major global environmental regimes that are compiled for ease of reference. We have placed links to each of the agreements as well as a short highlight from each to explain their importance.

The objective of this Convention is to promote shared responsibility and cooperative e orts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm and to contribute to their environmentally sound use, by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics - Article 1

Climate Regimes

Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities." UNFCCC

The ultimate objective of the Convention is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system." It states that "such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner." - UNFCCC

"The Convention has substantially contributed to the development of international environmental law and has created the essential framework for controlling and reducing the damage to human health and the environment caused by transboundary air pollution" - UNECE

"The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) is the main international convention covering prevention of pollution of the marine environment by ships from operational or accidental causes" - IMO

"stresses the “precautionary approach”, which requires that “appropriate preventative measures are taken when there is reason to believe that wastes or other matter introduced into the marine environment are likely to cause harm even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relation between inputs and their effects”.It also states that "the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution" - IMO

Climate change and its burdens upon health worldwide, require policy actions that are efficient, complex and fact based. The Lancet provides this report "in order to ensure the highest attainable standards of health for populations worldwide"

"An examination of the regulatory challenges inherent in addressing climate change will reveal the need to rethink the goals and mechanisms of regulatory response and responsibility. The reality that hazards of significant scope and seriousness can escape regulatory attention and response for so long raises the question of why this occurs" Keep Reading